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Abstrakt. Between 1988 and 1994, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) and Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) fought a war over

the political future of Azerbaijan’s province of Nagorno-Karabakh; an autonomous province with an Armenian demographic majority, but with tremendous historical

ASALA & ARF ‘VETERANS’ IN ARMENIA AND THE

NAGORNO-KARABAKH REGION OF AZERBAIJAN

Christopher GUNNCoastal Carolina University

Blown up bridge on the Shusha-Agdam road. To block the Azerbaijani villages of Karabakh, Armenian terrorists destroyed the infrastructure of the region

Karabakh

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and cultural value to both sides. Although a ceasefire has held for 19 years, and while all three of the local partici-pants have lost, Azerbaijan lost more. Nagorno-Karabakh claims it is an independent nation, albeit one not rec-ognized by a single government in the world, not even Armenia, and Armenian armed forces and militias illegally occupy 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory.

There are a multitude of reasons why this six-year conflict ended the way that it did, and many of them in-volve the Armenian diaspora. While the significant role the diaspora played in securing weapons, money, sup-plies and volunteers for Armenia and Karabakh, and its successful public relations campaign directed towards Western governments, media and public opinion dur-ing and after the conflict are typically mentioned, schol-ars have yet to conduct detailed analyses, in English at least, on the diaspora’s role in the conflict (1). While this paper will not explore the entire range of the Armenian diaspora’s activities between 1988 and 1994, it will at-tempt to explore at least one: the role of two Armenian terrorist organizations, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s (ARF) terrorist wing, in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Although it will likely never be known precisely how many of the approximately 300 diaspora volunteers who arrived in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh to fight in the conflict were veteran terrorists of ASALA and the ARF, this paper will make two arguments (2).

Introduction. In the wake of the end of World War I and the collapse of the Russian Empire, the new inde-pendent republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan both laid claim to the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. When the case was put before the Paris Peace Conference, the al-lied governments sided with Azerbaijan in early 1920 (3). The Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, however, and their advance into Transcaucasia made the wishes of the Paris Peace Conference a moot point. In July 1921, despite the lobbying efforts of Armenian political lead-ers to transfer the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh from the Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenian SSR, the Caucasian

Bureau of the Russian Communist Party ultimately con-firmed the Azerbaijan SSR’s retention of the province (4). Considering the intense competition for the region im-mediately after the First World War, the first 65 years of Nagorno-Karabakh’s existence as part of the Azerbaijan SSR passed peacefully, with only a handful of minor inci-dents in the mid-1960s and late 1970s (5).

In the late 1980s, however, this all changed. In August of 1987, a political petition from Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh to Moscow requesting the transfer of the province from Azerbaijan SSR to Armenia SSR set

These Azerbaijani refugees expelled from Armenia did not receive housing, work or food. Moscow pretended that they

simply did not exist

Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia’s Kafan District arrive in Azerbaijan

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in motion a series of events that, within a few months, plunged the southern Caucasus into a humanitarian cri-sis that witnessed ethnic cleansing, displaced persons, illegal occupation, terrorism and war that remains un-resolved today, more than 25 years since the first out-break of violence. While the origins of the conflict are multifaceted and complex, like most violent conflicts, at its simplest, the dispute pitted the right to self-de-termination for an Armenian majority in an Azerbaijani SSR province against the constitutional rights of the Azerbaijan SSR, and later the sovereign rights of the Republic of Azerbaijan in a historically and culturally significant area for both groups. Obviously, however, it is much more than that, and even labeling the conflict properly is difficult, given the geopolitical context dur-ing which it was fought. It began as an internal dispute of the Azerbaijan SSR and a civil war between two re-publics of the Soviet Union and then evolved into an undeclared war between two sovereign nations and a breakaway province (6).

Although a ceasefire brokered in May 1994 has for the most part held, the war took the lives of approxi-mately 17,000 to 25,000 Azerbaijanis and Armenians, wounded over 50,000, and produced well over one million refugees, of which the vast majority, over sev-enty percent, were Azerbaijanis (7). The most infamous and deadliest event of the entire period, the massacre in Khojaly on February 25 & 26, 1992, alone saw the slaughter of approximately 500 to 600 non-combatant Azerbaijani civilians by Armenian militias, with an ad-ditional 1000 wounded, 1250 taken hostage, and an-other 150 who remain missing and unaccounted for (8). In one of the more bizarre twists of this conflict, the United States Congress responded to this tragedy by in-explicably passing a resolution denying all forms of U.S. aid to Azerbaijan until, among other things, it respected “international human rights standards.” (9) Today, includ-ing the province of Nagorno-Karabakh, which seceded from Azerbaijan on December 10, 1991, 20 percent of the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan re-mains occupied by Armenian armed forces (10).

Nagorno-Karabakh in the Diaspora and Mainstream Media. Despite claims that the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh suffered under the oppressive rule of the Azerbaijanis and continuously sought to be reassigned to the Armenian SSR, there is little record of this in either the Armenian or the mainstream press in the United States. In fact, prior to December 1987, evidence that the diaspora had any concerns over the

loss of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, the plight of Armenians living there, or that they were even aware the issue existed, is few and far between. In the two de-cades between 1966 and 1986, there are only a handful of references to Karabakh: six articles in the Armenian press and two articles in the mainstream media, one of which was then read into the Congressional Record.

Even this attention towards Karabakh appears to have been provoked by the large demonstration com-memorating the 50th anniversary of 1915 massacre in Yerevan in 1965, which revitalized Armenian national-ist movements throughout the diaspora, and by spe-cific reports of sporadic clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani inhabitants of the region (11). There was no sustained attention towards either the prov-ince of Nagorno-Karabakh, or the Armenians who lived there until 1988, and after that, coverage of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia dominated the Armenian-American press for next six years. Fortuitous for Armenia and the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, there was not much else competing for the attention of the diaspora at the time. By 1988, the civil war in Lebanon was wind-ing down, and Armenian terrorism, the assassinations of Turkish diplomats and their families and high-profile as-saults on embassies and airports, which had energized and emboldened the Armenian diaspora since the early 1970s, had not been factor in nearly five years.

ASALA & the ARF. During the 1970s and 1980s, two Armenian terrorist organizations, The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and a ter-rorist wing of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), first known as the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG) and later as the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA) (12), carried out a combina-tion of assassinations, bombing campaigns and assaults that spanned North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia aimed, ostensibly, at extracting genocide recognition, reparations, and eastern Anatolia from Turkey. Both groups emerged from Beirut, Lebanon, the political center of the Armenian diaspora, at a time when the political tactics and protests of the Armenian diaspora, along with the rest of the world, were becom-ing radicalized and increasingly violent. ASALA and ARF terrorist attacks also occurred in the immediate wake of the the Gourgen Yanikian murders of the Turkish Consul General Mehmet Baydar and Consul Bahadır Demir in Santa Barbara, CA by on January 27, 1973. Yanikian enjoyed near unanimous support, both financial and moral, within the diaspora for his actions and become

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an overnight hero and celebrity. The reaction of the di-aspora to the assassination of Turkish government of-ficials was not lost on the founders of ASALA or the ARF leadership (13). ASALA is credited with being the first modern Armenian terrorist organization, but the ARF was very quick to follow its lead.

There are currently two theories regarding the creation of ASALA, and they differ only in very mi-nor details. The first is that Simon Simonian, a renown Lebanese-Armenian intellectual, linguist and publisher of the Beirut Armenian weekly Spurk [Diaspora], urged his brother-in-law, Kevork Ajemian, another burgeoning Armenian intellectual, and a Protestant Armenian min-ister based in Switzerland, James Karnusian, to formu-late and conceptualize plans for an Armenian “liberation movement.” At some point during this period, Simonian became acquainted with Haroution Takoushian (aka Hagop Hagopian), a half-Armenian mercenary who worked for Wadi Haddad’s faction within the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-External Operations (PFLP-EO) (14). Once he introduced this veteran terrorist to Ajemian and Karnusian, the movement acquired the means through which to move from conceptualization to actual implementation.

The second version argues that it was Fatah’s Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf ) who suggested to Takoushian that an Armenian terror cell should be developed along the lines of Black September, and it was Takoushian who then sought out and enlisted the aid of sympathetic Armenian intellectual(s) (15). Regardless of the specific details, ASALA carried out its first attack on the World Council of Churches in Beirut, Lebanon on January 20, 1975.

The ARF is one of the original and most powerful modern era Armenian political parties, founded in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1890 (16). No strangers to violence, the ARF began life as an armed force and operated against the governments of the Russian and Ottoman Empires, ar-guably the most famous attacks being the takeover of the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople in August of 1896 and Operation Nemesis, the campaign of targeted assas-sinations against former Ottoman government officials and Armenian sympathizers between March of 1921 and April 1922 (17). The ARF transitioned away from international to intra-national violence in subsequent decades and focused on obtaining local political power and influence (18). From at least the late 1950s, the ARF maintained a paramilitary wing in Lebanon and a num-ber of ARF members were arrested in Syria in 1961 for

Moscow-Baku passenger train blown up by Armenian terrorists on May 30, 1991. 11 dead, 22 wounded

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stockpiling large quantities of weaponry (19). Although this is not surprising given the instability of Lebanese politics 1950s, it certainly facilitated the process of cre-ation when the decision came in the mid-1970s to orga-nize a terrorist cell. While the specific details of the ARF’s decision to form a terrorist wing remain unknown, it is alleged that the leadership was afraid that the youth-ful, aggressive, militant and, potentially, more popular ASALA would be more attractive to the diaspora youth than the ARF. Therefore, the ARF’s top leadership, the Bureau, created the Justice Commandos Against the Armenian Genocide to maintain its membership ranks and to compete with ASALA for new recruits (20). Given the lack of any media coverage and the frequency and locations of ASALA’s initial attacks, however, this argu-ment is not convincing. What we do know is that ARF member Apo Ashjian was the leader of the first incarna-tion of the ARF terrorist cell, the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG). Ashjian had a falling out with ARF Bureau members Hrayr Maroukhian and Sarkis

Zeitlian though, who allegedly negotiated a deal with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to cease all ARF terror-ist activity in the United States. Ashjian continued to plan attacks in the United States, however, and was apparent-ly assassinated for his insubordination in December of 1982 (21). It was at this point that the group’s name was changed to the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA), and Ashjian was replaced by Sarkis Aznavourian, who, a mere two and a half years later, was also assassinated, but not by the ARF (22). Rumors persisted throughout this period that Maroukhian and Zeitlian had assumed control of the terrorist wing, and on at least one occasion Maroukhian was denied entry into the United Kingdom because of his connections to Armenian terrorist organi-zations (23). At a minimum, Hrayr Maroukhian, the chair-man of the ARF’s Bureau from 1972 until he was forced to leave Armenia in 1992, must have had some knowl-edge or involvement in the creation and implementa-tion of the terrorist cells.

Between January 20, 1975 and February 2, 1988,

House in the village of Ashagi Askipara in Azerbaijan’s Gazakh District. Results of Armenian artillery fire. August 1990.Moscow still pretended that it did not notice how Armenian terrorists using heavy weaponry

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ASALA and the ARF killed approximately 100 individu-als, including 29 Turkish diplomats and their immediate family members and at least 14 of their own operatives, and wounded more than 500 more (24). By early 1982, however, Western intelligence and police agencies be-gan to crackdown on Armenian terrorist activity in the United States and Western Europe and, for the first time, ASALA and ARF agents were in custody, in jail, or on trial. After the attack in Paris at the Orly airport in July 1983, Monte Melkonian split from ASALA and started his own rival Armenian terrorist organization, but by then the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had developed an impressive network of informants and agents who were providing the FBI with high quality, reliable intel-ligence on ASALA, the ARF and Melkonian’s new orga-nization, the ASALA-Revolutionary Movement (ASALA-RM). Armenian terrorism was on borrowed time.

When Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh began to openly agitate for a revision to Azerbaijan’s borders in mid-February 1988, it had been three years since the last significant Armenian terrorist attack: the ARF’s as-sault on the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa, Canada. During that three-year hiatus, a brutal war unfolded on the streets of Beirut between either ASALA and the ARF, the ARF and Mossad-inspired Turkish counter-terror hit squads, or perhaps all three, that took the lives of at least fourteen high-ranking members of the both organiza-tions between January 1985 and March 1986 (25). The ARF terrorists that survived this bloodletting, and who were not in jail, largely disappeared, or at least went dormant, and took a backseat to the more traditional political and publishing activities of the ARF. It appears that some may have also moved into the ARF’s illicit ac-tivities, such as arms smuggling, drug trafficking, par-ticularly Heroin, and money laundering (26). Takoushian on the other hand, seems to have concentrated ASALA’s efforts on anti-ARF, anti-Western and anti-Turkish pub-lications and propaganda, while loaning his terrorists to the Libyans, Syrians, Palestinians, and whoever else would pay. When he was assassinated on April 28, 1988, two months after the Karabakh and Yerevan demon-strations, it seemed that, for all intents and purposes, Armenian terrorism had run its course. At a minimum, the death of Takoushian meant that the ASALA that had terrorized innocent civilians and governments in Europe and North America for over a decade, was finished.

The outbreak of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan rejuvenated the individual hopes and careers of the remaining ASALA operatives

(27), many of whom had no other choice but to migrate to Armenia by the early 1990s. For the ARF, Nagorno-Karabakh merely represented a new chapter in their long history. There were minor changes in location, ti-tles, conditions and targets. They traded North America, Europe and Australia for the Caucasus. Instead of terror-ists, their armed operatives were now called paramilitary groups and militias. Instead of operating underground in, possibly, hostile foreign territory, the ARF was now “home,” and appears, at least until 1992, to have oper-ated independently of the laws and jurisdiction of the Armenian government (28). Instead of targeting Turkish civilians and business interests, and anyone else who got in the way, the paramilitaries now targeted Azerbaijanis, Russians, Armenians and anyone else who got in their way. The tactics employed by the ARF’s terrorist organi-zations, seem to have been very similar to the ones em-ployed by the paramilitary groups and militias. The ARF members who left the diaspora to volunteer to fight on behalf of the homeland did so willingly.

ASALA’s Rejuvenation. The resurgence of extreme Armenian nationalism in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian SSR in 1988, and in particular the prospect of acquiring more territory for Armenia, could not have come at a better time for ASALA and the ARF’s terrorist wing. Largely leaderless and directionless, excitement and enthusiasm for Armenian terrorism had waned during the years its operatives were incarcerated, on the run, or in hiding. This had a much greater negative im-pact on ASALA, which did not have the history, organi-zations, contacts and resources that the ARF had. It was much more difficult for an ASALA agent to disappear or transition to a non-violent occupation: the Armenian youths attracted to ASALA were ideologues who joined the organization for life. In other words, most embraced ASALA’s ideology and its interpretation of the Armenian cause in its totality, and wanted to see the fight carried through to the very end. Land, specifically the reclama-tion of lands lost, was the crux of ASALA’s ideology, at least for Kevork Ajemian, James Karnusian and Monte Melkonian. In fact, making sure that there were enough Armenians left in the regino to resettle the lands, once they were taken back, was a major concern for ASALA, as more and more Armenians left the Caucasus and the Middle East for Western Europe and North America (29). As ludicrous as the idea may seem that Turkey, the United States or NATO would tolerate any territorial changes in eastern Anatolia, the only significant bor-der between a NATO country and the Soviet Union, to

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the founding fathers of ASALA, and true believers like Monte Melkonian, the prospect was still theoretically possible. During the 1970s, right and left-wing violence in Turkey had produced near civil war-like conditions, and the 1980s saw the rise of the PKK. ASALA’s links to the PKK are well known, and there is evidence that it was also cooperating with some of the more violent left-wing groups in Turkey. Also, as detente gave way to the start of the “New Cold War” around 1980, the hos-tility and mutual distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union reached levels not seen since the 1960s. The West’s victory in the Cold War, therefore, was anything but assured during the first half of the 1980s, but by 1985 the Soviet Union’s chances for victory and expansion were fading, and by November 1989, were all but destroyed. Nagorno-Karabakh, therefore, offered ASALA’s scattered veterans their first chance at a sym-bolic “victory” for the Armenian cause, even if redraw-ing the internal administrative borders of an autono-mous province with an Armenian majority between the Armenian SSR and the Azerbaijan SSR was far and away removed from goal of liberating the lands of eastern Turkey and repopulating it with Armenian settlers. In fact, annexing Nagorno-Karabakh quickly took prece-dence over eastern Turkey (30).

Ironically, a mere six days before the assassina-tion of Takoushian, the FBI believed that ASALA would not involve itself in any confrontation with the Soviet Union over Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh and would “congradulate [sic] the Soviet authorities on whatever repressions occur.” (31) The FBI failed to understand that Armenian nationalism and anti-Turkishness, in this case applied to the Azerbaijanis, trumped all ideological con-siderations. It also missed a thinly veiled threat to the Soviet Union in a statement issued by ASALA on April

7, 1988 that they were pleased the leadership of Soviet Armenia was supporting the separation claims of the Nagorno-Karabah Armenians, and that they believed “justice would prevail.” (32) Two years later, someone using the ASALA name issued another statement on the organization’s behalf claiming that ASALA vowed it would be actively involved in the liberation and annexa-tion of the Karabagh region to the Armenian SSR” and that it viewed “the Karabagh region to be an insepara-ble part of historical Armenia.” (33)

There was also another factor that was pushing ASALA operatives to the Caucasus. By the late 1980s, they were running of time, options and, most impor-tantly, places to go. West European governments, and their respective police and intelligence agencies, were no longer as sympathetic and forgiving as they once were. Beirut, the terrorist and heroin transit capital of the world, primarily so because of the complete de-terioration of state authority during the decade and a half civil war, was slowly returning to normal, and thus, no longer a guaranteed safe haven. ASALA’s support in Eastern Europe deteriorated, first, in 1987, when their intelligence agencies began to cooperate with the CIA on counterterrorism (34), and then in November 1989, when the communist regimes began to collapse. Even the two most sympathetic nations to Armenian terrorism, Greece and Cyprus, had proven to be un-safe after Takoushian’s assassination in February 1988. It can be assumed that Monte Melkonian was not the only ASALA terrorist who chased the receding borders of communism in 1989, as he bounced from Yemen, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and, finally, Bulgaria, before landing in Yerevan, Armenia on October 6, 1990 (35).

References:

1. TheexceptionbeingThomasGoltz’s recentbriefsurveyonpropagandaduringthewar.SeeThom-as Goltz, “The Successes of the Spin Doctors:WesternMedia Reporting on the Nagorno Kara-bakhConflict,”JournalofMuslimMinorityAffairs,Vol32,No.2(June2012):186­195.

2. ChristopherZürcher,ThePost­SovietWars:Rebel-lion,EthnicConflict,andNationhoodintheCauca-sus(NewYork:NewYorkUniversityPress,2007)

House in the village of Garmechatag in Nakhchivan destroyed by Armenian artillery fire. 1990

Karabakh

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3. Audrey L.Altstadt,TheAzerbaijaniTurks:Powerand Identity under Russian Rule (Stanford, CA:HooverInstitute,1992),102.

4. Ronald Grigor Suny, Looking Toward Ararat:Armenia in Modern History (Bloomington, IN:Indiana University Press, 1993), 194; Altstadt,AzerbaijaniTurks,117.

5. Suny,LookingTowardArarat,195;CIA,“UnrestintheCaucasusandtheChallengeofNationalism,”October1988.(foia.cia.gov

6. SeeUmut Uzer, “Nagorno­Karabakh in RegionalandWorldPolitics:ACaseStudyforNationalism,Realism and Ethnic Conflict,” Journal of MuslimMinorityAffairs,Vol.32,No.2(June2012):250.

7. HumanRightsWatch/Helsinki,Azerbaijan:SevenYearsofConflictinNagorno­Karabakh(December1994),ix;Zürcher,ThePost­SovietWars,178.

8. This is a conservative estimate.SeeGoltz, “TheSuccesses of the Spin Doctors: Western MediaReportingontheNagornoKarabakhConflict,”189;SvanteE.Cornell,AzerbaijanSinceIndependence

(New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2011), 62­63; MarkarMelkonian, My Brother’s Road: An American’sFatefulJourneytoArmenia(NewYork:I.B.Tauris,2007), 213­214; Zürcher, The Post­Soviet Wars,169; Hugh Pope, Sons of the Conquerors: TheRise of the Turkic World (New York: OverlookDuckworth, 2005), 52; Thomas De Waal, BlackGarden:Armenia andAzerbaijan through PeaceandWar (NewYork:NewYorkUniversity Press,2003),170­171.

9. Uzer, “Nagorno­Karabakh inRegional andWorldPolitics,246;FarizIsmailzade,“TheGeopoliticsoftheNagorno­KarabakhConflict,”GlobalDialogue,Vol. 7, No. 3 (Summer/Autumn 2005): 106; DeWaal,BlackGarden,234&276;SvanteE.Cornell,“Turkey and the Conflict in Nagorno­Karabakh:ADelicateBalance,”MiddleEasternStudies,Vol.24,No.1(January1998):57.

10. KambeckandGhazaryan,Europe’sNextAvoidableWar, 25; Cornell, “Turkey and the Conflict inNagorno­Karabakh:ADelicateBalance,”51­72.

Rally in Baku. People demand that the Center stop the aggression and terror

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56 www.irs-az.com

11. Haig Sarkissian,“50thAnniversary of the TurkishGenocide as Observed in Erivan,” ArmenianReview Vol. 19, No. 4 (Winter 1966): 23­28;Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Events of April 24 inMoscow— How They Happened and UnderWhatCircumstances,”ArmenianReviewVol. 20,No. 2 (Summer 1967): 9­26; JamesH.Tashjian,“The Problem of Karabagh,” Armenian Review,Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring 1968): 4­49; Richard G.Hovannisian, “The Armeno­Azerbaijani ConflictOver Mountainous Karabagh, 1918­1919,”ArmenianReview,Vol.24,No.2(Summer1971):3­39; Raymond H. Anderson, “Armenians AskMoscowforHelp,ChargingAzerbaijanwithBias,”NewYork Times, December 11, 1977,AndersonwrotethisarticleafterbeingcontactedbyVahaknDadrian,whosuppliedhimwithtranslatedsourcematerial; Vahakn Dadrian, “Those AudaciousArmenians,” Christian Science Monitor, January10,1978;“IssuesinSovietArmenia,”January23,1978; “A.R.F. 23rd World Congress Decisions.”Asbarez, August 30, 1986; “The A.R.F. PoliticalPlatform,”Asbarez,September6,1986.

12. Theexceptionbeing thefirstattack, themurdersof the Turkish Consul General Mehmet Baydar

and Consul Bahadır Demir in Santa Barbara byGourgenYanikian,onJanuary27,1973.

13. CIA, “GlobalTerrorism:The JusticeCommandosoftheArmenianGenocide,”September1984,CIA­RDP85S00315R000200060002­3.

14. “Rev.JamesKarnusian,RetiredPastorandOneof Three Persons to Establish ASALA, Dies inSwitzerland,” Armenian Reporter International,Paramus, NJ,April 18, 1998; “KevorkAjemian,Prominent Contemporary Writer and SurvivingMemberofTriumvirateWhichFoundedASALA,Dies in Beirut, Lebanon,” Armenian ReporterInternational, January 2, 1999; EdwardAlexander, “Diplomacy and the ArmenianFactor— Part II,” The Armenian Reporter,Paramus, NJ, July 9, 2005; “Armenian SecretArmy for the Liberation ofArmenia IT­ASALA,”FBI, January 20, 1987; Markar Melkonian, MyBrother’s Road, 76; Simonian, Ajemian andKarnusian are undoubtedly the “intellectu-als” alluded to in Monte Melkonian’s history ofASALApublishedin1985,althoughit isunclearwhetherornotheknew their specific identities.SeeMonteMelkonian,“TheReality,”in“BookletGivingHistoryofASALA’sExistenceGivesNewInsight Into the Revolutionary Movement,” TheArmenianReporter,10January1985.Whilenotcreditedatthetime, it isnowknownthatMonteMelkonian wrote the booklet reproduced in theArmenian Reporter; They are also most like-ly the “elders” described in the article entitled“Terrorism: Transnational Networks OriginatingintheMiddleEast.AnEssaytoRationalizewhatisClaimed tobe ‘Irrational’,” inParisLeDebat,March­May 1986, contained in “WorldwideReport—Terrorism,”FBI,June25,1986.

15. Robert I. Friedman, “Spanish Journalist, Victim ofASALA Bombing, Becomes Expert on ArmenianCause,” Armenian Reporter, November 15,1984; Markar Melkonian, My Brother’s Road: AnAmerican’sFatefulJourneytoArmenia(NewYork:I.B.Tauris,2007):77.Melkonianonlyacknowledg-esKevorkAjemian’sroleintheformationofASALA.

16. Razmik Panossian, TheArmenians: From KingsandPrieststoMerchantsandCommisars(London:Hurst & Company, 2006), 205; Suny, Looking

Propaganda literature and explosives were secretly supplied from Armenia to Karabakh

Karabakh

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TowardArarat,24.17.Panossian,TheArmenians,206­223,&238.

18. The assassination of Bishop Touranian in themiddle of a church ceremony in New York Cityin December of 1933, aside. See Ronald Suny,LookingTowardArarat:ArmeniainModernHistory(Bloomington,IN:IndianaUniversityPress,1993.

19. SamirKassir,Beirut, (Berkeley,CA:UniversityofCalifornia Press, 2011), 508; Ara Sanjian, “TheARF’sFirst120Years:ABriefReviewofAvailableSources and Historiography,” Armenian ReviewVol.52,No.3­4(Winter2011):11.

20. State Department Telegram Yerevan 001054,“Dashnaks Maneuvering for Position,” June 16,2005;AndrewCorsun,“ArmenianTerrorism:1975­1980,” Department of State Publication Series9281,December1981,19;CIA,“GlobalTerrorism:The Justice Commandos of the ArmenianGenocide,” 2­4; CIA, “The Armenian SecretArmy for the Liberation ofArmenia:AContinuingInternational Threat,” January 1984, CIA­RDP85T00283R000400030009­2, 2; Michael M.Gunter,“PursuingtheJustCauseofTheirPeople”:A Study of Contemporary Armenian Terrorism(Westport,CT:GreenwoodPress,1986),55­56;

21. “NewLightShedonKidnappingofARFLeaderinDecemberof1982,”ArmenianReporter, January26,1984;“CypriotPaperImpliesApoAshjianHasBeen Killed by OtherA.R.F. Leaders,”ArmenianReporter, June 7, 1984; “Second Installmentof “Confessions” Attributed to Abducted A.R.F.Leader,SarkisZeitlian,”ArmenianReporter,March6, 1986; “WhoTippedOff the F.B.I.?,”ArmenianReporter, May 8, 1986; “ASALA Publication,“Armenia”,FocusesonDashnagCrisis,”ArmenianReporter, May 8, 1986; “Amicus America, SedMagisAmica…TheArmenianCause,” inMoush,June­July1986,No­9/10.

22. “DisappearanceandAssassinationofARFLeadersinLebanon:ARFRevolutionaryMovementClaimsResponsibility,” Armenian Reporter, October 31,1985; “Who Tipped Off the F.B.I.?,” ArmenianReporter, May 8, 1986; “Mercenaries Carry OutActs Against A.R.F.,” Asbarez, July 18, 1986;Hratch Dasnabedian, “Who Gains from Anti­ARFActivities?,”Asbarez,January1,1987;FBI,“Hagop Hagopian, also known as, ArmenianSecret Army for the Liberation of Armenia IT­ASALA,”December30,1987.

23. “Top Dashnag Leader Refused Entry intoBritain,”ArmenianReporter,November29,1984;“DisappearanceandAssassinationofARFLeadersinLebanon:ARFRevolutionaryMovementClaimsResponsibility,” Armenian Reporter, October 31,1985.

24. Ömer Engin Lütem, Armenian Terror (Ankara:CenterforEurasianStudies,2007).

25. FBI translation of the March/April 1986 issue ofArmenia,anArmenianlanguage,ASALAmagazine.See“ArmenianSecretArmeyfortheLiberationofArmenia; IT­ASALA,” January 28, 1987; CharlesStuart Kennedy, “Interview with AmbassadorRobertS.Dillon,”May17,1990.http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/diplomacy/about.html

26. JonathanV.Marshall,TheLebaneseConnection:Corruption, CivilWar, and the International DrugTraffic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,2012),154­156; “Arrest ofARFMembers in 1993Lebanon Drug­Trafficking Charges Now LinkedtoActivities of “Dro”Group,”ArmenianReporter,January21,1995.

27. Melkonian,MyBrother’sRoad,160.28. “President L. Der Bedrosian Rejects Strategy of

War&Reassets [sic] Policy ofNegotiations;Or-dersA.R.F.TopLeaderOutofCountryAfterCharg-ingHimofPlottingWiththeSovietKGB,”ArmenianReporter,July4,1992.

29. Thiswas the reason behindASALA’s first attackagainst theWorldCouncilofChurches (WCC) inBeirut,as theybelievedtheWCCwasfacilitatingtheemigrationofArmeniansoutofthearea.

30. FBI,“Armenia/PoliticalAffairs,”March7,1990.31. FBI, “ArmenianSecretArmy for theLiberationof

Armenia,IT­ASALA,”April22,1988.32. “ASALASpeaksOutonKarabaghDevelopments,”

Armenian Reporter, April 7, 1988. 33.StateDepartmentTelegram,STATE324063,September24,1990.

34. Tim Naftali, Blind Spot: The Secret History ofAmerican Counterterrorism (New York: BasicBooks,2005),195.

35. Melkonian,MyBrother’sRoad,170­181&278.

Was part of a presentation at the First International Forum of Studies of the Caucasus and published in «First International Forum of Studies of the Caucasus. Scientific reports. Vol. 1. Baku: MTM Innovation, 2017».

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